Monday, January 23, 2017

The Nuclear Winter of Our Discontent

Like Many Americans, I
watched Donald Trump’s speech at CIA headquarters on Saturday with fear and
trepidation.Then I went and printed out
a transcript and that is when the true horror of his remarks began to sink in.

Mike Pence got things
off to a good start by characterizing himself and his family as humbled to be
in the office of vice-president.I am
definitely no supporter of Pence’s views on women and reproductive rights as
well as a host of other positions, but at least he was gracious and humble in
front of the people his boss has been denigrating and insulting for the last
several weeks.Pence used the word
humbled again when speaking of himself standing in front of that “hallowed wall”
at Langley where those 117 people are commemorated who gave their lives in
service to the country.His remarks
seemed scripted, and he remained on script.He kept the evil under wraps.Then
Trump took over.

He began almost
immediately berating the media, although he said “They treated me nicely on
that speech yesterday.”I could not
follow this.Was the press disrespectful
up to that point in the ceremonies?How
exactly did they treat him nicely on the speech?The words simply seemed like a way to give himself
a complement:they treated him nicely,
so he must have made a great speech.

Back to the people in
front of him, he pulled a classic Julius Caesar note:he spoke of himself in third person.Freud would call this an over-abundance of
ego.Non-sequitur again back to the wall
of CIA martyrs, which he said was “very, very special.”His favorite descriptor of anything is “very.”“Very great, very bad, very sad.”In the next sentence, he said “We’ve been
touring for quite a while, and I’ll tell you what—29?I can’t believe it.”At that point, someone in the audience corrected
him:“28.”What were they talking about?“We’ve been touring for quite a while…”Is he part of a rock band?“Oh, 28.We got to reduce it.That’s
amazing.And we really appreciate what
you’ve done in terms of showing us something very special.”What was special?Who did the showing?

Trump specializes in
the sweeping generalization, often inaccurate, exaggerated, or just an outright
lie.He claimed the military and law
enforcement gave him “tremendous percentages of votes.”That may be true, but why is that important
now that he is president.He leaped to
the conclusion that everyone in the audience probably voted for him, but he would
not ask them to raise their hands.Of
that, I am surprised.

There was language
throughout this speech, when it was not nonsensical, that was scary.When speaking of “wars” that have gone on “for
longer than any wars we’ve ever fought,” which I took to mean Iraq and
Afghanistan, he said “We have not used the real abilities that we have.We’ve been restrained.”Putting that together with reports that he
asked about the possibility of using nuclear weapons in his security briefings
before he was president, I have to wonder what those “real abilities” and
restraints are.Does he plan to use
nuclear weapons to attack ISIS?He then talked
about understanding “the other side.”What “other side?”“There can be
wars…You can understand what happened.”Was
he trying to draw a line between conventional wars with another country, such
as Germany in the Second World War as opposed to ISIS now?I would argue it is still difficult to
understand the evil of Hitler and the Nazis.It is also difficult to comprehend the level of murder and mayhem when
it comes to 13 million men, women and children.

Trump swerved away
from that topic and discussed his hiring process since the election.“We had a great transition.”Evidently, there is a rubric for this?Reince Priebus put these people in front of
Trump and the president argued that “they don’t care about Reince.”Who is they?However, Trump immediately went back to his line:“we had such a tremendous, tremendous
success.”Trump’s vocabulary needs some
new words.He also needs help with
grammar.“So when I’m interviewing all
of these candidates that Reince and his whole group is putting in front, it went very, very quickly…”Simple subject-verb agreement.I know George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush
never met a sentence they couldn’t mangle, but is it too much to ask that the
President of the United States be articulate?

Trump finally landed
on Mike Pompeo, the guy he’s nominated to head the CIA, who was, of course,
another great guy.But someone, it
seems, is playing “political games” with Trump.Pompeo was supposed to be confirmed already.Trump singled out the generals as passing
muster, but “All my political people, they’re not doing so well.”What or whom he was specifically speaking of
here was not clear.But the mention of
generals got him started on another tangent.

It seems Trump does
not get enough credit for being an academic genius even though he had some
uncle who was a “great professor” at MIT for 35 years.“Trust me,” he said, “I’m like a smart person.”Of course, he is a person “that very strongly
believes in academics.”Zigzagging back
to Pompeo, Trump said of him that he was “essentially number one at Harvard Law
School.”One is either number one in the
class or not.What would “essentially”
being number one mean?But Trump, in all
his vast experience with the military, something he dodged all his life, claimed
that these generals “are wonderful, and the fighting is wonderful.”The fighting, when directed properly, is “easier.And, boy, do we lose so fewer lives, and win
so quickly.”I am sure the ease of a
well-directed war came as a shock to those military and CIA veterans present in
that hallowed space.

Trump segued into
feeling young.He only feels “30, 35,
39.”He gave speeches in front of tens
of thousands of people, he says, so he must be young.But not only is he young; “I think we’re all
sort of young,” he told the audience.Then
we got the tired campaign line about how America never wins anymore.And this brought us again to more dangerous
verbiage.“The old expression, ‘to the
victor belongs the spoils’—you remember,” he asked the crowd.“I always used to say, keep the oil.”Trump did not support the war in Iraq, but
once we were in, he thought we should keep the oil.“So we should have kept the oil,” he said.“Maybe you’ll have another chance…”Another chance, like another invasion?Again, is he talking about military action in
the Middle East?

Of course, Trump has
been building to a final song and dance and it is a familiar one:the dishonesty of the media.He complained his crowd size was
underestimated.The press had played
down his viewers, his acolytes, his throngs of people waiting for him to take
the reins of the country and, wait for it:“Make America great again!”But
rest assured, before America can be great, the media must be vanquished.He claimed “we” caught them in a lie, and “they’re
going to pay a big price.”Threatening
the press for doing its job?So much for
democracy at its finest.

With North Korea
announcing that they are in the “final stage” of perfecting a nuclear weapon
that can reach the west coast of America, doesn’t he have more important things
to worry about than crowd size?Seriously, with a weapon of that reach, North Korea could hit all the
major cities on the west coast, including San Diego where the Pacific fleet is
based and Los Angeles, the second largest city in the country.He could hit Hawaii and Pearl Harbor, yet
again.

As I sat and watched
the Inauguration and the marches across the country the day after, I could not
help thinking that we need someone with focus and brains to navigate this world
right now, not some amateur anti-intellectual misogynist.God help us.

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